Welcome to Twin Speech, Language & Literacy LLC! (Previously known as Twin Sisters Speech and Language Therapy LLC). Our mission is to make original theme based materials that are both useful and fun! We strive to make every single therapy session interactive, enjoyable, and very beneficial! We love being speech therapists and enjoy knowing that our students want to come back each and every week!

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Hello! Today I would like to post on speech sound development. When a little one begins speech therapy with me around the age of two, and if they have limited speech, I begin with encouraging the imitation of the early speech sounds. There are many studies that have been conducted on the acquisition of sounds and some of them do not agree with each other. Although they differ, it can be deducted what typically is considered the norm of when sounds are mastered.

Parents can help expose their children to the early speech sounds while they play with them, during reading time, and by being good models of correct sound production. Another fun way to help to encourage imitation of speech sounds is to get music involved. Here is an example of a music c.d. which has songs for learning early speech sounds: Songs for teaching.

Another component that I use to help with the production of sounds is the use of visual phonics. I use the See-the-Sound system. See-the-Sound Visual Phonics is a system of sound associations which represent each sound in our language with a hand signal and a graphic or written symbol. In See-the-Sound Visual Phonics the 46 hand signals represent sounds, not letters or words. Follow this link: Visual Phonics for more information and to see a video clip of someone using the system for spelling the word CAT.

I made a new resource for helping to encourage the imitation of the early speech sounds. Download the preview at our TN and TpT stores (links below) to receive some FREE pages and to get a glimpse of what you will find in this 122 page document targeting early speech sounds in isolation!For this articulation packet I chose the sounds of: B, D, G, H, K, M,N, P, T, AND W for working on at the isolated stage. I am always looking for new and fun activities to use with my younger students who are working on early speech sounds and I have exhausted many of the available material options out there. That is why I made this packet! The packet has been very motivating for my little ones and I can often elicit 100 or more sound productions a session! I have also been excited to see that this type of interactive therapy helps to develop turn taking, facilitates question asking, and it helps to work on the auditory comprehension area of one step directions.

P.S. I also think that this would be a wonderful packet for helping to increase early letter awareness and phonics, as each letter is worked on individually. It would be a great early literacy packet for the preschool crowd!

I hope that you find every page useful and fun to do with your students!